Yesterday was the first day of another fantastic year at SES Toronto! It was a great experience being surrounded by so many Search Engine Strategy experts – I have learned so much and I’m so excited to share all the information!

Below I have highlighted some of the most important points from yesterday’s sessions:

Introduction to Search Engine Marketing

The first session I attended was presented by Matthew Bailey who is the president of Site Logic Marketing and is also on the SES Advisory Board.

– Motivations and intentions are given to you based on the visitors search

– Three ways people search:

Artillery – someone who gets a phone call from their doctor and searches the diagnosis he/she was given – ranking doesn’t matter but the content does

shotgun – concept of something they need and search it immediately, this search leads to more search engines – if we are going to Disney land we have to figure out where we are staying, where we are going to eat, what we are going to do etc. – looking for lots of related information on your page to keep them engaged and moving through the process of finding answers for their questions

sharpshooter – east patient people because they already did the research and know exactly what they are looking for, most likely to hit the back button if you don’t provide the information right away

– Keyworddiscovery.com – shows you all the types of searches with the specific keyword you search

– “The long tail” – bigger is not always better. The #1 search term is going to give you 20% of your business and the rest of the keyword variations are going to bring you 80% of conversions due to the amount of competition of keywords

– Construction and phrase of a word is more important than the actual keyword, it’s also important to have a pattern – example of using a pattern is a suffix and prefix of your keyword. Example: family vacation suffix will have destinations while the prefix will have types of vacations, prices etc. Plural gets you more traffic but fewer sales

– Traffic can go down because searchers stop searching – for that you should try Google Insights, it gives you a comparison of keywords on a time graph. This tool will also show you how important singular and plural is and how much of a difference it can make in your searches

– The page title is the most critical important aspect of your site – it displays in the search engine results so this is the most persuasive way you can bring searchers to your page. The meta description is also very important because the search engine takes a snippet of your meta description in the search results

– Every single page title for every single search engine is limited to 65 characters to persuade the searcher to click on your site

– The structure of your page is vitally important because of scan-ability – 79% of users scan a web page. Scan-ability includes:

headlines

sub-headings

bulleted lists

bolds

hyperlinks

big buttons such as subscribe

Best example is a newspaper; they have been targeting readers for decades by using headlines.

– Typography, layout, font size and the color scheme – are the four key elements to credibility of a website

– Alt attribute; if an image does not load on your page the alt attribute of your image will notify search engines what it is! This means that your picture can also rank for that specific search

– http://bit.ly/mb-linkdex – this will help manage your site in context, it will teach you how to evaluate your rankings, compare to your competitors, which links your competitors have that you don’t etc.

– Rankings are not a measure of success – three vital questions to answer with your analytical data: What did the visitors what?, what did they see?, what did they do?

– It depends if you send your visitors to your homepage or the product page based on a certain set of keywords, it can change the conversion rate

– Google Analytics can help you differentiate between a rank and a valued visitor

– “Long tail” keywords are usually worth more than the keyword itself

Social Media 101

Judith Lewis, Head of Search, Beyond presented the second session I attended on the first day of #SESTO.

– Twitter can create more buzz through social media in comparison to Facebook

– There are seven types of social sharers:

altruists (share to help)

selectives (relates to a friend)

passionates (has an interest)

connectors (share to make friends)

trend –potters (share because they are always on top of everything that’s new)

provocateurs (they want a reaction)

careerists (share for their business)

– People communicating with the brand through social media are more likely to make the purchase

– It is recommended that despite of so many social media outlets to only open accounts, which you will be active on, if you are not going to be completely committed and active it looks worse for your company

– Image sharing through social media is a great way to engage with a specific community and also end up in image search results

– 54% of Facebook users have less than 100 friends

– 11% of people occasionally tweet about a product

– Twitter: research tool, promotion, dialogue, first line of defense for customer service

– Social Media Top 10 Tips:

Define your outcomes

Find your voice

Be interesting

Give back

Timing is everything

Be personal

Balance

Engage

Promote

Offer added value

– 31% of people are prompted to make a purchase after communicating on social media

– Klout is used as a rough assessment of your influence through social media

– Don’t buy followers because you can see a downfall in the future with your followers. It’s more important to keep followers engaged instead of having a larger amount of followers.(Quality vs. quantity)

– Relauthor.com has a huge importance on Google+ and blogging

Spy vs. Spy: Competitive Analysis

The third session I attended was presented by Matt Van Wagner, President of Find Me Faster and Jim Yu, Founder & CEO of BrightEdge.

– Your search competitors are very different from your industry competitors. It’s important to identify your search competitors and how often do they come up in search results

– Going through your competitors page is a great way to figure out their page descriptions and meta tags, that way you can understand what they are trying to rank for and eventually map out your own ranking factors

– Once you know what your competitors are doing you can predict what they are going to do and do it faster and better than them!